Public employee with a valid CCW permit working in a public building. The permit holder has some kind of Smith & Wesson 9mm auto pistol. He uses the rest room and elects to take the gun out of the holster and hang it on the coat hook on the inside of the door of the restroom stall.

When he is finished, he walks off and leaves his gun hanging there. Somebody finds it, and a controversy ensues . . .

If you're going to carry a gun, you need to have your brain switched on all the time . . .

__________________You can only learn from experience if you pay attention!

there is a guy in the other side of town from me that lost his CHL when he opened fire on two store thieves leaving the scene. Said he was trying to shoot out the tires, thieves got away and the police arrested the citizen.

Then also in my state a guy goes to the movies with his CCW and it falls out of the holster and he goes home. A highschool student finds it and calls the police. He lost his permit and the gun...... a WWII era Beretta taken from a Nazi trooper. shame....

Bathroom stalls -- and old thing for the BGs is to go into a bathroom ,look under the door and see if there's someone inside . If so they reach over the door and grab anything on the hook..This happened to an off duty cop recently here. The BG fumbled with the gun having two NDs in the process .Gun recovered ,BG escaped.

Yeah, seems that negligence is a good reason for losing your permit. If you leave your gun lying around where others, especially kids, have access to it, then you have to pay the consequences. At least no one was hurt or killed!

In Koda's first link, the ccw holder was using deadly force on someone who was fleeing. He is not a cop and even the cops are not supposed to shoot at fleeing suspects.

__________________
The ATF should be a convenience store instead of a government agency!

There is a story - could be an urban myth - of an officer who hung a semi on a coat hook and somehow the trigger got jostled. The gun spun around the hook, emptying its mag as it kept bouncing on the hook.

Much gun hilarity ensued in the police station due to the string of rapid fire shots.

Anybody know if this is real.

People leave their infants to die in a car oven in the sun. So leaving a gun is in the realm of prospective memory errors.

There is a story - could be an urban myth - of an officer who hung a semi on a coat hook and somehow the trigger got jostled. The gun spun around the hook, emptying its mag as it kept bouncing on the hook.

Much gun hilarity ensued in the police station due to the string of rapid fire shots.

Anybody know if this is real.

People leave their infants to die in a car oven in the sun. So leaving a gun is in the realm of prospective memory errors.

Glen,

I feel like I've heard this story but it was a DHS employee. The DHS part makes it more believable in my book.

We had a guy on the PD who left his off duty gun unattended in the squad car. When the next guy coming on duty checked the car out, he found the gun.

The officer in question got a letter of repremand and TEN days off without pay. He's damn lucky he didn't get fired, because that was discussed.

So, if a cop in your town leaves their sidearm in a rest room (or someplace else) unattended, and all they get is "written up" it's not an issue of "double standards" it's an issue of poor management practices at that particular police department . . .

__________________You can only learn from experience if you pay attention!

I read over J's post & it reminded me of the topic I put up a few days ago, a private citizen with a concealed license leaving a Beretta pistol in a movie theater.
Cops & security officers can and do lose firearms a lot. I worked with a guard in 2004 in NW Florida. He was a US Army veteran & "trained" but wasn't very ethical or responsible. He told our shift members how he got fired from a company in the Fort Myers area because he left a loaded .38spl revolver in a restroom! Dumb!
As I stated before, lost sidearms happen a lot during POTUS campaign stops too. I guess they get stressed out or tired from the long details.
I've learned to pull my weapon & duty belt in my lap if I need to use a stall.
I also remember gunwriter & tactics trainer Massad Ayoob writing about the subject. He said the TV cop character; Det Fish from the sitcom; Barney Miller was a good example of older license holders or cops using shoulder holsters.
If they need to use the restroom often, it's a good way to keep your firearm secure.
Clyde

A friend and I were returning home from a shoot in NE OH. We had stopped and had steaks after the shoot. My buddy's steak was not agreeing with him and we stopped at a rest stop. While he was doing what had to be done I heard something hard hit the floor and he swore loudly. His Glock 27 had fallen out of the Shark-Tac (junk) holster he uses. It bounced out of the stall he was in. I was not as, engaged, as he was so I walked over and picked up his pistol.

We had a good laugh about it back in the car but it could have been pretty bad if someone else was in that restroom rather than me.

__________________
"9mm has a very long history of being a pointy little bullet moving quickly" --Sevens

ADs or NDs are serious with holsters, but many times it's more annoying or a cause of embarrassment.

In the late 1990s, I went to a popular hot dog restaurant outside of Pittsburgh PA with my cousin. I was wearing my Aker shoulder holster and didn't want to take my weapon inside. It was only concealed by my heavy coat. I secured my pistol, a 96D .40 and got out of the small car. When I took my coat off to remove my shoulder rig, I could swear EVERY restaurant patron by the windows stared directly at me! There was no discreet way to take my holster off. Lol.

I'm glad that in my mostly 2A + state, new laws were put in to allow license holders to not get in any legal trouble if their gear or firearms are exposed like that. Wind, bad weather or some other factor may expose a holstered weapon.

Just had a bad mistake happen. I was going to shoot my G27 at the range so I grabbed a new (ie, untested!) IWB holster for my G23. I have proven holsters but this one was similar to a famous brand and handy at the time. Slipped it on and seemed fine.

While I was out and about I loosened my gun belt a tad for the long car ride, and later when I bent over out plops my G23!!! Fortunately it was in a remote area of a parking lot and I was able to grab it quickly and tuck it back into place. I immediately went to the trunk and ditched the pistol into an ammo box and removed the holster.

Turns out the design of the holster only has kydex on one side and the flexible leather shield on the other side. It holds the pistol if your belt is cinched tight but any slack and the holster no longer grips the pistol!!

Lesson: never ever ever wear CCW gear that I have not worn and practiced with for some time in private. I shudder to think what the scenario would have been in a crowded grocery aisle or such.

Guy went on a short convoy from one PB (patrol base) to another PB just down the road. Finished their crap and were back on the road when they received a radio call "Uh (won't mention the persons name), where's your rifle?"

Wasn't there to see it personally but I'm sure he had to clean his cammies after that one. I also know of a 2LT platoon commander who got relieved of his command for doing the same thing.

__________________
NCO of Marines, 3rd Award Expert Rifle, 236 KD Range
D Co, 4th CEB, Engineers UP!! OEF 21JUN-20SEP2011
REV. 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

Regardless of how many police officers or security officers it happens to, it still doesn't make it right. Maybe there needs to be more severe consequences for leaving firearms behind. I think everyone here can agree with the law that prohibits leaving firearms accesible to children.

There was a recent article online about a couple of kids finding a loaded weapon in a movie theater. Thankfully they were responsible and notified an adult rather than picking it up and playing with it. The articles mentions that the boys are scouts and were taught to treat all guns as if they were loaded. Imagine if it was a couple of thugs who decided to play with it and accidentally shot you or a loved one.

Let's hold ourselves accountable for our weapons rather than pointing out the obvious double standard.

__________________
The ATF should be a convenience store instead of a government agency!

Wasn't there also some kid in a Starbucks recently. That had just obtained a permit to carry. He was in the bathroom of Starbucks practicing his draw in front of the mirror, he then put a .40 bullet into the sink. Destroying it and cause a ruckus.

He then waltzed on out like nothing ever happened.

Police caught up to him somewhere in the plaza with the description given.

__________________Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Does it seem reasonable that in grabbing a jacket the gun in the pocket went off twice?

Obviously the gun went off twice because there's two holes in the ceiling so that part of the story is not in doubt. Maybe the thief and the cop were fighting for control of the gun? (But it doesn't say that in the story.)

Pin-wheel semi-auto story. For Lost Sheep and Glenn, I heard it when I visited a Texas Instrument campus in Dallas around 1978. My version was a security guard heading out to his car 'for just a minute' didn't bother unloading the gun and hung it on a peg in the arms safe and it went off several times spinning around on the peg with richochets going out into the room. I trust Lost Sheep's version that it was written up in a gun magazine and my friend that told me the story was embleshing it and making it local.

A few months back a friend of mine from central Fl. sent me a local news article about a driver bringing an AR 15 with several loaded mags in a ballistic case to the local police station, Seems he pulled over to relieve himself(he's on a diuretic) couldn't wat for restroom, saw case in front of his car when he came back and opened it and did the right thing. Sheriff deputy with special response team, had a flat and had to take the gun out to get the spare. The local PD brought it to the sheriff's dept and it was on his desk with a note to see the watch cmdr, he had continued his shift with the spare, so the gun beat him to the dept.

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